East Hampton Star Profiles Regina Calcaterra
By Mike Connery on 05/27/2010 @ 05:01 PM
The East Hampton Star is running a great profile of Regina Calcaterra, who is challenging 32-year incumbent Ken LaValle in Suffolk County (SD-1).
One why she's running:
Ms. Calcaterra said Tuesday that the idea to run came to her during the election of 2008, when she voted in New Suffolk, where she lives, and was surprised to see that Mr. LaValle was running unopposed. “I think everyone should have a challenger,” she said. “I made some simple inquiries. How come the Democrats didn’t have a strong candidate? There was a perception that he was unbeatable.”
But, she said, in that election only 81,000 of the 161,700 who turned out actually cast a vote for him. “For 50 percent of the turnout not to vote for State Senate seemed pretty powerful.”
On her history:
Ms. Calcaterra has the kind of biography that seems to have come out of a movie script or an Oprah’s Book Club selection. She was one of five siblings left by an alcohol and drug-addicted mother and different fathers. When they lived with their mother “we were evicted from every home we lived in.”
They were in and out of foster homes, but also lived in homeless shelters and abandoned cars in order to stay together. They often found refuge in libraries, where they read to one another and taught themselves when they couldn’t get to school, she said.
When she was 14, she realized that in order to go to college she would need to stay in one place to complete high school. “No one in social services knew what to do with someone who wanted to go to college. It was not their typical experience.”
She gained emancipation from her mother and stayed with a family in Centereach until she was accepted in the State University of New York system. She started at Stony Brook and completed her studies in political science at New Paltz.
Her first job out of college in 1988 was with the Eastern Paralyzed Veterans Association, a group of Korean and Vietnam War vets who were paraplegic or quadriplegic. At the time, they were lobbying for the Americans With Disabilities Act, which became law in 1990. Once it passed, she continued to work with the group to follow the law’s implementation.
At 26 she began to take classes at a law school at night while she continued to work as legislative director for the New York City Comptroller’s Office. In passing 10 laws governing things such as public pension funds and prevailing wage laws, she said, from a Democratic city office she was able to build coalitions among the Republican state senators and governor and Democratic members of the Assembly.
Regina is a living example of what good, efficient government and public services can do when we invest in people. Her campaign has LaValle on the run (after decades unchallenged, he's already knocking on doors) and she's got a real shot at winning this race. Check out the full profile, and sign up to volunteer with her campaign to bring real change to Albany.
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